[January 24, 2005]

Polycom Releases SIP Products, Appoints Board Member

BY JOHANNE TORRES

Pleasanton, CA-based Polycom, Inc. made two separate announcements today—the company released a suite of SIP-based products, and also appointed former co-president and chief financial officer of PeopleSoft Kevin Parker to its Board of Directors.

"Polycom continues to deliver the ultimate communications experience, and we are starting our 15th anniversary year with continued innovation," said Steve Huey, chief marketing officer of Polycom. "We are extending our end-to-end support for SIP with the first SIP conference phone and the industry's only entry-level video conferencing system that supports SIP."

Polycom added two SIP-based products today to the company’s SIP-based product suite—the SoundStation IP 4000 and the VSX 6000. SoundStation is a new IP conference phone based on Polycom’s iconic triangular-shaped SoundStation line delivering better voice quality and microphone pick-up capabilities and expanding the company’s support for SIP to conference phones. Also supporting SIP, the VSX 6000 is a new entry-level addition to Polycom’s VSX line of video conferencing systems designed to reduce the cost barrier for high-quality video conferencing and collaboration.

The SoundStation IP 4000 SIP conference phone delivers better voice quality and microphone pick-up capability enabling people to be heard clearly up to 10 feet away from the phone. The phone features a back-lit, graphical LCD, gated microphones and expanded microphone capabilities for larger conference rooms, and SIP support for BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems environments. The phone's 248 x 68 pixel resolution LCD offers easy access to the most common business telephony functions including transfer, hold, redial, and conference. The combination of a SoundStation IP 4000 conference phone with Polycom's complete line of SoundPoint IP desktop phones provides customers with a range of solutions for SIP-based communication environments, which can deliver productivity enhancing applications on the phones and flexible telephony options with Polycom reliability and quality.

"Our industry-first SIP conference phone combined with our award-winning SoundPoint IP phones offers customers a range of high-quality, standards-based VoIP phones for different desktop environments and the conference room," said Sunil Bhalla, senior vice president and general manager of voice communications at Polycom. "We are pleased to launch our new SIP conference phone with two leaders in the VoIP application server market BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems."

The Polycom VSX 6000 is a new entry-level video conferencing system designed for smaller, IP-ready conference rooms and for companies that require high-quality video collaboration on a limited budget. The VSX 6000 offers better quality audio fidelity with 14 kHz audio, 360-degree voice pickup from the VSX microphone array, and Polycom 14kHz StereoSurround for better sound quality and clarity that would recreate the spatial quality of sound from a participant's location in the conference room at the far end. Polycom’s VSX video conferencing line offers audio error concealment and the capability to add voice-only participants with the integration of the SoundStation VTX 1000 conference phone.

The VSX 6000 also offers features such as second monitor support, dual monitor emulation, multiple options for high resolution data sharing, extensive SIP support for Microsoft and Nortel Networks environments, and built-in Cisco CallManager 4.0 ECS support. The VSX 6000 will also join the VSX product line in the next release of Avaya's Video Telephony Solution Powered By Polycom. The VSX series offers a video quality in an H.264 video call at low bandwidths, while at the same time presenting data and projecting voices in 14 kHz audio.

Polycom VSX 6000 is currently offered at the manufacturer's suggested resale price of US$4,999 from certified Polycom channel partners. The SoundStation IP 4000 for BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems environments is now available for a manufacturer's suggested resale price of US$1,099 through Polycom VoIP Certified Resellers.

In related news, Polycom announced today the appointment of Kevin Parker, former co-president and CFO of PeopleSoft to its Board of Directors. "We are very pleased to have Kevin join our board of directors and believe his wealth of financial and operational experience in leading one of the largest global software companies will help guide Polycom as converged voice, video, web and data applications become integrated elements of core networks worldwide," said Bob Hagerty, chairman and CEO of Polycom. "His perspective of what enterprises expect from their mission critical applications and vendors will prove invaluable."

Parker served as PeopleSoft's CFO from October 2000 to December 2004. He was also named co-president of the company last October. At PeopleSoft he was responsible for internal operations as well as worldwide finance and accounting functions, including administration, human resources, legal, facilities and the IT organization worldwide.

"I have long followed Polycom's progress and I'm delighted to be joining the Board at such an exciting point in the company's history," said Parker. "Voice and video over IP is becoming mission-critical as organizations are realizing the competitive advantages that come from adding these applications to their network. Polycom is the leader in this converged collaboration space and I look forward to helping them grow during this important phase for this industry."